A typical cooking appliance of the prior art has a structure as shown in FIG. 1 through FIG. 3.
The cooking appliance utilizes a medium 2 provided with a cooking menu, a material list, a cooking procedure, a cooking time, control information for cooking utensils, nutrient information, cost, and the like as a food information code 1 in a form of characters, voices and images. And, as shown in FIG. 1, the cooking appliance comprises an input means 4 for inputting the food information code 1 into a food information unit 3, a recognition means 5 for discerning the information from the input means 4, a notification means 6 for notifying the information of the recognition means 5, a group of key switches 7 for operating the recognition means 5, and a memory means 8 for storing the food information code 1.
Cooking information is readily and freely obtainable by adding the food information code 1 into the currently available medium 2. The more often the food information code 1 is used, the more useful information it provides to the user (Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. H08-272808).
Another example of a cooking appliance, as shown in FIG. 2, is capable of communicating with an external network.
A microwave oven is shown as an example of the cooking appliance. The cooking appliance 11 consisting of a microwave oven connected with an external management system 10 via a communication pathway 9 comprises: a display means 12 for displaying information in order to discern a cooking recipe such as recipe names, etc.; an operating means 13 to be manipulated for selecting a cooking recipe according to the information displayed on the display means 12; a memory means 14 for storing the information for discerning the cooking recipe such as recipe names, and data relating to the cooking sequence for the recipe; a communication control means 15 for bidirectionally communicating with the external management system 10 via the communication pathway 9; a selection control means 16 operated under a control of the communication control means 15 for reading the information for discerning the cooking recipe stored in the management system 10, displaying it on the display means 12, and transmitting to the management system 10 the cooking recipe selected with a manipulation of the operating means 13; a memory control means 17 operated under control of the selection control means 16 for receiving the information for discerning the selected cooking recipe and the data of cooking sequence for the selected recipe stored in the management system 10, and storing them in the memory means 14; a power supply controller 18; and a cooking unit 19. In order to control the cooking appliance 11, the management system 10 establishes a recipe modification command for the cooking appliance 11, upon recognition of the cooking recipe selected by the cooking appliance 11 through the communication pathway 9. On the other hand, the cooking appliance 11 makes a check of a recipe modification command via the communication pathway 9 upon switching on of power, and it rewrites content of the memory means 14 under control of the memory control means 17, if the command exists. The management system 10 is provided with a cooking recipe management table for storing a file name of character data representing a cooking recipe and the cooking sequence data corresponding to an identification number that is discernible of each cooking recipe among a plurality of the cooking recipes, and an appliance management table for registering identification numbers of the cooking recipes stored in the memory means 14 of each of a plurality of the cooking appliances 11. And the management system 10 transmits to the cooking appliances 11 the character data maintained by the cooking recipe management table, and, at the same time revises a content of the related appliance management table with an identification number of the selected recipe, in response to a control of the selection control means 16 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. H09-60886).
Also, a microwave oven shown in FIG. 3 comprises: a cooking cavity divided into a plurality of zones; a plurality of feeding ports 20 capable of selectively supplying energy into each of the zones; a temperature detecting means 21 for detecting temperatures of each zone; an input means 22 for inputting a heating information including a finishing temperature for any of the zones; a determination means 23 for determining a difference between the finishing temperature input by the input means 22 for any of the zones and an actual temperature of the zone detected by the detecting means 21; and a modification means 24 for changing a frequency of selecting the feeding port 20 based on a result of the determination by the determination means 23.
The cooking appliance as described above has been such that the input means 22 employs a pen-input method for designating a specific cooking zone, and the cooking is carried out while temperature of the food is being determined by the determination means 23 as the cooking advances, in order to achieve an optimum result (Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. H07-198147).
The microwave oven of FIG. 2 has had a problem of impairing taste of foods as a result of cooking even if the cooking sequence data is transferred to the cooking appliance 11 via the communication pathway 9, in the case of reheating a box lunch. It is because the microwave oven reheats every food item such as rice, side dishes, salad and pickles contained in the lunch box, even though heating is not desired for the salad and pickles.
Furthermore, a problem of the microwave oven in FIG. 3 has been that it employs a pen-input method for inputting the cooking sequence data so that a user must designate a cooking zone for each of the food items, when for example using it to reheat a box lunch.
According to research conducted, box lunches sold at convenience stores have been modified of their contents at a rate of 30 to 40 times every 2 weeks, and sales of box lunches during a lunch hour period have concentrated within 15 minutes from 12 o'clock. It has taken an average of 35 to 40 seconds to reheat an ordinary box lunch, for example, even with a microwave oven of a regular commercial purpose having an output power of 1400 watts. If a customer requests his box lunch reheated, a store clerk places the box lunch in the microwave oven and selects a button corresponding to the box lunch to start the reheating. It has taken an average of 1 minute and 25 seconds until the box lunch is handed over to the customer after taking it out of the microwave oven and putting it in a bag, including 40 seconds of the reheating time. While it has also included an average of 25 seconds to make a settlement of the payment, it has caused a problem of congestion during crowded times with customers, besides forcing the customer to wait for more than 1 minute. The problem of congestion has even been worsened, when the store clerk has used the pen-input method to designate a specific cooking zone. The problem has occasionally been complicated further due to customers trying to reheat box lunches again, after they have been taken out in the middle of reheating operation in order to avoid the crowdedness with customers, which inevitably leads to less than a desirable heating result.